In this video (Dec 2006), Mary talks about how companies that compete on the basis of basis create a huge competitive advantage. The enemy? Complexity in the product and the process. It comes in three basic floavors:
Inconsistency – Anything that is uneven, unbalanced, or irregular.
Overload – Any excessive or unreasonable burden.
Waste – Anything that unnecessarily takes up time, effort, space, or money.
All three flavors of complexity are rampant in software development processes, and you can’t go fast until you root them out.
In this 60-minute (JAOO 2005 talk), Scrum creator Dr. Jeff Sutherland covers the history of Scrum from its inception through his participation with Ken Schwaber in rolling out Scrum to industry, to its impact at Easel, Fuji-Xerox, Honda, WildCard, Lexus, Google. He looks at Scrum types A, B and “all at once” type C, and confirms the humorous rumour that Kent Beck “stole” Scrum practices when creating XP.
See the video and presentation published on InfoQ on November 06 HERE.
Ron Jeffries’ upcoming book looks at how tracking “Running Tested Features” is the essential element of Agility, from which all other practices and activities necessarily follow. Deborah Hartmann interviews Ron who takes to the whiteboard to explain how, when supported by XP’s “simple design” practice, RTF helps teams deliver consistently without building up costly technical debt.
See a 15 minutes video posted on InfoQ on November 2006 here.
A longer version (90 minutes) shot at XPWestMichigan on March 2006:
Agile2007 is already past by 2 months. Time to make use of those notes!
This first post on A07 is about dysfunctional meetings.
Jean Tabaka reminded us that they are lots of ceremonies in scrum: iteration planning meeting, daily scrum, demo, retrospective, and then more as needed. All of have a purpose, and, well run, will be the backbone of success for the team.
Though, meetings are often not effective. Here’s Jean top 10 common meeting dysfunctions:
Meetings are repetitive, they are all the same
The same people do all the talking
Subjects are beaten to death, again and again
We come to decisions just to get out of the meeting
I don’t have time to code because I am in too many meetings
We have too many people in our meetings
We have too few people in our meetings
With the constant stream of meetings, we are treated like machinery
not people
Our demos and reviews never really bring about any thing new
All the decisions were made outside the meeting anyway; we just
have the meeting to be told what we are doing and to agree
If you suffer from several meeting dysfunctions, then meetings are not serving the team, then the team is dysfunctional (see the five dysfunctions of a team).
So Jean reminds us of the important roles of the ScrumMaster as a facilitator:
Guides team through the groan zone of a meeting
Asks questions, doesn’t teach
Leads by serving, serves by leading
Separates expertise and facilitation work
Believes in the wisdom of the team and the “art of the possible”
In my mind, dysfunctional meetings are often a sign of an untrained ScrumMaster in facilitation techniques. Jean gives us organizing tools for effective meetings:
Purpose and Agenda
Personal Objectives
Ground Rules – What agreements help our team meet its goals?
Parking lot – What topics should be held if they don’t help us meet the Purpose of the workshop?
Action Plan—who will follow-up and when
Decision Board—what decisions need to be maintained
Communication Plan, Resources
Definition of Consensus – how do we make decisions
Red cards – give red cards to all participants. Red cards can be raised by anyone when they feel the discussion is going off track
Individual time box – example 3 minutes per person
Stand-up – it takes 30% less time to come to the same decision standing rather than sitting
Prioritized backlogs – get Product Owners manage their backlog conflicts outside the iteration planning
“One new leader of his country found on his desk two letters from his predecessor, numbered 1 and 2 and to be opened in the case of the first emergency and the second. Well, the first emergency happened. The new leader opened the first envelope and the letter said, “blame me.” He did; his people bought it. Life went on. A year later another emergency hit. He opened the second envelope and the letter said, “now sit down and write two letters.”
This wouldn’t be that funny if this wasn’t happening so frequently.
New manager comes in.
Changes things his way.
Team fails.
Blames predecessor.
Moves on.
So what does new manager ought to do? Maybe nothing — besides listening.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein, “Time Enough for Love”
